Follow My Blog!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Our Daring Bakers' Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

Sourdough is made without adding any yeast or leavening, by fermenting your own sourdough ‘starter’. The natural yeasts in the flour do the work of making a lovely loaf of bread – we just facilitate that process. Sourdough is basically bread as your great-, great- grandmother knew it, before the days of Chorleywood (i.e. factory-made, steamed, sliced, additive-filled) bread and packaged yeast. It takes time, but not too much active work.

I have to say that while I had a lot of fun with this recipe, it was a colossal fail! I've never made a starter before, and watching this one develop and bubble up was really cool. Unfortunately, I let my dough proof too long (didn't realize that would be an issue), and while I ended up with what looks like a beautiful loaf, it was extremely dense and didn't quite develop the crumb I was hoping it would. I was hoping to get a good picture of the cut loaf, but since I failed to successfully get a good crumb, I didn't photograph the inside of the loaf :(

The great thing about this recipe, though, is that you're left with a starter that you can keep on using... so I look forward to trying this recipe again! :) Thanks Jessica, for hosting this month's challenge. Make sure you check out the Daring Bakers' Blogroll to see how everyone else rose to the challenge.

French Country Bread
Servings: 1 large loaf plus extra wheat starter for further bakingWheat Starter - Day 1:

Directions:
1. In a Tupperware or plastic container, mix the flour and water into a paste.
2. Set the lid on top gently, cover with a plastic bag, to prevent messes in case it grows more than expected!
3. Set somewhere warm (around 86 F if possible). I sometimes put mine on a windowsill near a radiator, but even if it’s not that warm, you’ll still get a starter going – it might just take longer.
Wheat Starter - Day 2:

Directions:
1. Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 3, cover, and return to its warm place. At this point it should be bubbling and smell yeasty. If not, repeat this process for a further day or so until it is!

Directions:
1. Mix the dough with all the ingredients except the production leaven. It will be a soft dough.
2. Knead on an UNFLOURED surface for about 8-10 minutes, getting the tips of your fingers wet if you need to. You can use dough scrapers to stretch and fold the dough at this stage, or air knead if you prefer. Basically, you want to stretch the dough and fold it over itself repeatedly until you have a smoother, more elastic dough.
See my demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqS3raEGdwk
3. Smooth your dough into a circle, then scoop your production leaven into the centre. You want to fold the edges of the dough up to incorporate the leaven, but this might be a messy process. Knead for a couple minutes until the leaven is fully incorporated in the dough. See my demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPO97R4iO4U
4. Spread some water on a clean bit of your work surface and lay the dough on top. Cover with an upturned bowl, lining the rim of the bowl with a bit of water. Leave for an hour, so that the gluten can develop and the yeasts can begin to aerate the dough.
5. Once your dough has rested, you can begin to stretch and fold it. Using wet hands and a dough scraper, stretch the dough away from you as far as you can without breaking it and fold it back in on itself. Repeat this in each direction, to the right, towards you, and to the left. This will help create a more ‘vertical’ dough, ready for proofing. See my demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDoJRCMfclE
6. Heavily flour a banneton/proofing basket with whole wheat flour and rest your dough, seam side up, in the basket. Put the basket in a large plastic bag, inflate it, and seal it. Set aside somewhere warm for 3-5 hours, or until it has expanded a fair bit. It is ready to bake when the dough responds to a gently poke by slowly pressing back to shape.
7. Preheat the oven to hot 425°F/220°C/gas mark 7. Line a baking sheet with parchment, then carefully invert the dough onto the sheet. I like to put the baking sheet on top of the basket, then gently flip it over so as to disturb the dough as little as possible. Make 2-3 cuts on top of the loaf and bake for 40-50 minutes, reducing the temperature to moderately hot 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6 after 10 minutes.
8. Cool on a cooling rack.

Notes:
• Good bread starts with good flour. Beyond trying to find good quality, local (organic if possible) flour, Whitley recommends finding out three things: how was it milled? (stoneground ideally, to retain more nutrients); how much of the original grain is left in the flour (ideally 95-100 % for bread making); and lastly, how much protein is in the flour? (the more protein, the more gluten, leading to a more stretchy dough – ‘strong’ or ‘bread’ flour indicates a higher level of protein).
• Normal tap water is fine in most cases, unless you live in a municipality that heavily chlorinates the water. Chlorine will kill almost all bacteria, including your yeast, so you’ll want to use filtered water if you can. Whitley says that leaving water in a pitcher overnight can rid most of the chlorine.
• If you clean your kitchen with anti-bacterial products or harsh cleaners, try not to do it before baking and make sure your bowls are clean but have no chemical residue left on them! Many a bread has been deflated by an overly-sterilised kitchen.
• All of these recipes call for sea salt because it retains a higher level of minerals and has a stronger salt taste, meaning you can use less of it. Never add salt directly to your starter – it will kill the yeast, so use the following method: dissolve your starter in water, stir your salt through your flour, then mix the wet with the dry ingredients.
• When greasing pans for baking, try to use hard fats like butter because oil can drip down the pans and lead to a fried bottom on your loaf!
• When working with the dough, you might feel inclined to heavily flour your work surface or your hands. Resist this urge! Sourdough is meant to be wet and sticky – this helps to give the bread a nice crumb once it has baked. I work most doughs with my hands, but sometimes use a dough scraper to help lift and fold the dough. When I need to pick up or shape a loaf, I find damp hands work better than floured ones!
• If you don’t have dough scrapers, old bank cards/credit cards work just as well! But wash them thoroughly first.
• Try to work with your hands to make these recipes – mixing and kneading the dough by hand means you’ll get a better sense of how your dough should feel! We learn by doing!
• Remember, a lot of these timings are guidelines – pay attention as, depending on temperature and your starter, you may need more or less time to proof your dough. You want a dough that resists poking a bit (if you poke it, the hole will disappear) but not one that quivers all over and seems really fragile.
• Cutting the top of your loaf before it goes in the oven helps it to expand or split at those points. This means you don’t end up with funny outgrowths from your bread! You want to be quick, gentle, and use a very sharp blade – see the video at the end for tips.
• Notes on scheduling: For the Rye loaf, and all the other starters, I find it helpful to start the process on a Monday, so that come Friday/Saturday you are ready to bake. I refresh my starter (Stage 1) the night before baking, then do Stage 2 in the morning. For the French Country Bread, I refresh the starter in the morning, make the final dough at lunchtime, and bake at dinner time. For the Rice Sourdough, I soak the flaxseeds on a Friday morning, refresh my starter on Saturday morning, the prep the final dough at lunchtime, ready to bake at dinner.
• I would set the difficulty level of these recipes as: Rye – Easy!, French Country Bread – Med-Hard!, Rice Sourdough – Easy!
• Once you’ve finished baking, you’ll have some leftover starter. Keep this in a Tupperware container, as this is what you will use to start your next loaf (and so on…)! Some of the best starters are hundreds of years old – and they get better with time. If you bake daily, you can keep your starter at room temperature. If you bake weekly, I’d keep it in the fridge. You can also freeze starter if you bake very infrequently, but I find it does fine in the fridge so long as you feed it at least once a month. Simply refresh your starter according to the recipe – or with equal parts by weight of flour and water – and let it come back to life at room temperature.
• You might notice that your starter starts to smell a bit like acetone – this is completely normal. It may develop a grey liquid on top, which you can either pour off or stir back into the starter. When I refresh mine, I discard half of the original starter and add in fresh flour and water for the yeast to feed on.
• Sometimes, very rarely, a starter might get moldy. This is often due to being left at room temperature without feeding. If there is a lot of mold throughout the starter, I would discard it. But the odd bit is not always a problem. It is nearly impossible to kill a starter, unless you get salt or chemical products in it – so don’t fret! Often it is just a matter of feeding it over a few days and nursing it back to life.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

I hope everyone has had a sweet holiday with their family and friends. We've certainly enjoyed visiting with our family and celebrating Christmas with our precious little 2 year old. She had lots of fun opening presents (hers and everyone elses!) while exclaiming, "rip it!" as she tore through all the wrapping paper :) I can only imagine how next year will be even more fun!

And, for those who entered the Peeled Snacks giveaway, I'm happy to announce that Denise L. is the winner. I have emailed Denise and if I do not receive a reply within 48 hours, I will choose an alternate winner. Congrats Denise, and Merry Christmas!

I would never to think to make chocolate blueberry ice cream, but I've totally had chocolate covered strawberries, and chocolate covered dried cherries, blueberries, etc. so of course it would make sense that chocolate blueberry ice cream would be good :)

I thought I had everything I needed for this recipe because we usually keep frozen blueberries on hand for my daughter, but when I went to the make the recipe I realized that the recipe calls for blueberry preserves, not fresh/frozen blueberries! Well, I just so happened to receive some Pomegranate Jelly for my birthday in November, so I decided to puree some frozen blueberries (about 1 tbsp) and mixed it together with the Pomegranate Jelly.... resulting in the most delicious chocolate blueberry pomegranate ice cream!

If you would like the recipe, you can find here. Make sure you also check out this page, too, so you can see what everyone else thought of this unusual chocolate ice cream!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Get an additional 20% off with code SECRETSANTA and use coupon code XMASFREE for FREE shipping.

You’ll pay only $11.99 (+ tax) out of pocket. Then submit this $10 mail in rebate (only valid if item is purchased between 12/11 - 12/12 so purchase any time after midnight), making it $1.99 + tax!

Don't forget you can also get 5.5% cashback through ShopAtHome with their 110% guarantee. Simply go to the Kohl's page on ShopAtHome, then click on 110% guarantee (it's on the right hand side) and tell them that you found 5% cashback at Mr. Rebates with this link: http://www.cashbackmonitor.com/?mrr-kohls

Then proceed to click on Kohl's through ShopAtHome as usual and they will give you 5.5% cashback!

Please note that you won't be able to make traditional moist cake pops with these, but you can still make some sweet treats with it! :) I am thinking even waffle recipes would be great in this! Hurry, because this deal will likely sell out fast!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

I often get asked by my friends and family why I try so hard to feed my daughter healthy things when I myself eat so many sugary sweets! If you read my blog, you might wonder the same thing ;) Well, the answer is easy - I want her to have a better and healthier lifestyle. They say that what a baby/toddler eats during the first few years will help establish their eating habits for the rest of their lives. So if I can get her off to a right start now, I will hopefully raise a healthy eater. (Clearly, I was fed way too much sugar when I was a child because I have the worst sweet tooth of anyone I know!)

So, I do many things to ensure that she is eating well. I limit her salt intake and avoid processed foods whenever possible. I feed her fresh or frozen vegetable instead of canned vegetables. I only give her milk or water, never fruit juice (pediatricians discourage giving children fruit juice due to the high sugar content and low nutritional value). I limit her sugar intake - she did not have any refined sugar until she was 22 months old and now that she is older she is allowed to have some, but I try to limit the amount of refined sugar she consumes. Refined sugar has a higher glycemic index and will cause her to get a super sugar high (and then a big crash, which makes tantrums more likely).

Given all of this, I've had quite a time trying to find healthy snacks for her to eat. You don't realize how everything has sugar in it until you start reading labels and looking for things that don't have added sugar! (Not to mention how manufacturers will sometimes try to hide the sugar in their ingredients list by using dextrose, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) So, when I stumbled upon Peeled Snacks at Starbucks, I was really excited. Could a dried fruit snack with no added sugar, just fruit, really taste good?

Well, the folks at Peeled Snacks were kind enough to send me one of their Organic Fruit Picks Variety Packs that includes several of their organic fruit snacks: pine-4-Pineapple, much-ado-about-Mango, Banan-a-peel, Apricot-a-lot, Cherry-go-round and Apple-2-the-core. My favorite was the apricot; I'm not sure what it is about them (maybe they're sweeter?), but I found them to be much better than the ones we usually get from Sam's Club. I loved them all, but didn't care much for the dried banana - the pieces were a little tough (my daughter still loved them).

What did my little girl think about the variety pack? Well, her favorites are the dried pineapple, dried apples, and dried cherries. She will pretty much oblige to anything for some Peeled Snacks! :) I can't tell you nice it is, as a parent, to be able to find healthy snacks that my daughter loves.

Would you like to try some Peeled Snacks, too? Enter now to win your own Organic Fruit Picks Variety Pack. Just go to the Peeled Snack website and check out their Organic Fruit Picks Variety Pack, then leave me a comment here, telling me which type of dried fruit is your favorite (or which one you'd like to try most). For one additional entry, "like" Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats on Facebook, then come back here leave a second comment telling me that you "liked" my page.

This giveaway is open to US Residents only, and will be open until midnight Central Time on December 20th. Please note that comment moderation is in place, so your comment may not appear immediately. Also please make sure that you leave your email address if you don't have one associated with your profile! (I already have one comment from "unknown" and would have no way to contact him/her if he/she wins!)

Sunday, December 4, 2011

This week for Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) we had two recipes! (I actually had this post ready to go on Tuesday night and just realized I never posted it! oops!) The recipes were chosen by Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures and Judy of Judy’s Gross Eats. Tracey chose the Normandy Apple Tart and Judy chose the Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie/Tart. I was ambitious this week and made both :)

The Normandy Apple Tart is a very rustic and homey dessert. It's basically a tart shell filled with delicious homemade (or store bought) applesauce, then layered with apples on top. It's amazing how something so simple can be so delicious. I think using your own homemade applesauce really makes a difference in this dessert. I am also a huge fan of Dorie's tart shell recipe and use it all the time.... I even used it for the Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie recipe because Dorie mentions that as an alternative to your traditional pie crust.

The sour cream pumpkin pie was one of my husband's favorite desserts this Thanksgiving. He said he liked it better than traditional pumpkin pie because it wasn't so heavy. I thought that was interesting, given the amount of heavy cream in it ;) It has a nice blend of spices to it and I think the addition of some rum to the filling really makes it stand out.

While the pumpkin pie can be served cold or at room temperature, I thought the flavors were a bit muted when it was chilled, so I would definitely recommend serving it at room temperature.

Thanks, Tracey and Judy, for hosting this week! I really enjoyed both recipes. I don't normally eat pumpkin pie except around Thanksgiving, but I could definitely see myself making the Normandy Apple Tart a few times each fall :) If you'd like the recipes, please click here for the Normandy Apple Tart and here for the Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie.

* Recipe notes:

- Make sure to put a pie crust shield (or some foil) around the edge of your tart about 20-30 minutes into baking to avoid burning the edges.